


Thief's Trial

by SoulEcho



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24814486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoulEcho/pseuds/SoulEcho
Summary: When Karnus, a purple-blooded sociopath, is unwittingly thrust into a high-ranking Imperial position, what seemed like a simple job turns into a life or death battle against his own sins.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	1. A Blunt Introduction

A troll stands in his respiteblock. It just so happens that today is his NINTH WRIGGLING DAY. After nine sweeps of mundane terrestrial existence, today he will finally ascend to the stars.

>Be the troll.

You are now the TROLL. A strapping purpleblood on the very cusp of adulthood, you have been blessed your whole life with certain HEMOSPECTRAL ADVANTAGES. Namely, the ability to do whatever the fuck you want. Your birthright ensures that you will no doubt receive a prominent position in the EMPIRE, but you could care less about that. In fact, you’re rather upset that starting today, you’ll have to report to the EMPRESS. 

The respiteblock you stand in is decorated with various items you've SHAMELESSLY STOLEN. These trophies range from WORTHLESS to EXCEPTIONALLY EXPENSIVE, and in fact very few of them were any use to you. Most of your hoard consists of things you pilfered just to see if you could. All of them were of course taken from LESSER BLOOD CASTES, so in the eyes of the law, they’re all rightfully yours now. You wish you could take every single one of them with you, but you’ve already packed the useful ones away for your journey. A quick assessment reveals you have room to take just one more trinket.

Each item has been tagged with your signature, proof to everyone who cares to look that these misappropriated goods are the property of one KARNUS SOTORN. In a fine artistic touch, each item is color-coded, with your signature in the blood color of whatever poor sap you nabbed that particular prize from. You could spend hours marveling at the array of earthy tones, ranging from lowly rust all the way up to a bright teal. But if you did, you’d be wasting the precious hours you have left.

Thankfully, you have no need to waste any time on goodbyes. You certainly won’t be expending any on your lusus STINGWRAITH, on account of him being sliced to ribbons by your own hand sweeps ago. You didn’t need a lusus anyway, and the very idea of relying on someone else to care and provide for you is utterly revolting. In fact, he was more useful in death- you were able to harvest his venomous stinger and lash it to a farming sickle, resulting in a weapon that makes up for in lethality what it lacks in grace.

Now that you’re waxing poetic about it, you decide you might as well bring that sickle as your final item. You extract a RING from your RING MODUS and toss it at the sickle, the projectile expanding as it travels until it grows large enough to encircle the weapon completely. In a flash, the weapon vanishes, and the ring instantly returns to its original size before clattering to the ground. You pick it up swiftly, the circlet gleaming in the light as it glides toward your finger.

It never makes it.

The world around you is suddenly beset with an intense quaking that only seems to intensify the more seconds pass. The ring topples from your hand and onto the marble flooring, as you brace yourself against a wall to maintain your balance.

Just when it feels like the ceiling might collapse onto you, the quaking reduces to a dull, persistent vibration. You take a brief moment to regain your composure, but a moment is all you are afforded, before a rapid sequence of knocks at the door grabs your attention. There’s no point in deluding yourself, for you know there can only be one possible explanation. Sure enough, your door swings open to reveal a stone-faced seadweller, decked out in the unmistakable regalia of the Imperial military. 

“Karnus Sotorn, I presume.” The soldier’s monotone voice betrays so little emotion, he might as well be one of the robotic drones that the Empress seems to favor so much. You nod in response, keeping your contempt veiled behind a stoic exterior.

“Your role has been assigned. On behalf of Her Imperious Condescension, you are hereby given the title of ALDERMAN.” Alderman? No, that sounds wrong. Regardless of how many times you repeat it in your head, it just doesn’t seem to resonate, as if the name belonged to someone else. 

“Alderman, your briefing will take place aboard the  _ Vengeance _ . Please proceed onto the command deck for orders.” The broad-shouldered officer finally steps out of the door frame, allowing you to finally catch a glimpse of the ship that had nearly toppled your hive.

The  _ Vengeance,  _ as it is apparently called, appears to be a colony scout ship, designed to seek out and establish a presence on uncharted planets. Although scout ships rarely have a capacity over a dozen, the ship is still large enough in size that it can’t entirely fit on your lawn and awkwardly protrudes into the road. Its engines still hum with life, ready to take off to parts unknown at a moment’s notice.

“Your crew is waiting, Alderman, so if you’re quite finished gawking, I’d suggest you not delay any further.” The violetblood’s gills twitch ever so slightly, a hint that perhaps his poker face was beginning to crack after all. He curtly gestures toward the  _ Vengeance _ ’s gangway.

Frankly, you’re tired of this seafaring prick anyway, so you don’t hesitate any further. Striding onto the ship, you hear the whirr of the gangplank retracting behind you, followed by the clank of the door sealing shut.

It takes you a second to realize that the officer hasn’t followed you onto the ship. It takes you another second to realize you hadn’t thought to pick up your dropped weapon. You barely have time to register this information before something blunt and heavy connects with your skull, and in a heartbeat everything fades to an inky black void. You don’t even feel yourself hit the ground.


	2. Chapter 2: A Cold Hard Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After miraculously clinging to life, Karnus does his best to piece together what happened. After coming to a difficult realization, he now must chart a way forward, while hurtling through space on the ship he was supposed to command...

You awaken to a throbbing headache, and a room that won’t stop spinning. As lights and colors whirl relentlessly around you, a creeping icy sensation begins to encase your flesh. Slowly, the vertigo begins to dissipate, allowing you to piece together your situation. Immediately, the cause of the freezing cold becomes apparent - you’re laying face-up in the  _ Vengeance _ ’s cold storage room. Your own amethyst blood coats the once-sterile floor, and splashes of it stain the formerly pristine walls. As alarm bells begin to ring within your head, you try twitching your limbs into action, but they fail to budge an inch. A quick glance reveals that the blood pooled underneath you has frozen solid. The slick fringe of hair that usually hangs over your scarred, useless right eye has been matted nicely to your face by the chilled rivulets of blood. So much of the icy, amethyst liquid surrounds you that you briefly wonder if you have any left in your body. You continue to lay there, dazed, until you can work up enough energy for another attempt.

Finally, with a decisive tug, your arms come free of their icy bindings. Pushing your hands against the frozen floor for extra leverage, you yank your legs free next. Painstakingly, you heave yourself up from the prone position, pieces of amethyst ice dripping off your beaten body. Just that slight movement is enough to send another shock wave of pain through your skull, disorienting enough to send you collapsing onto your knees in agony. A horrible ringing sound permeates your ears, and your insides feel as if they’ve twisted into an excruciating knot.

But you resist the urge to lie back down and rest, because you aren’t certain you’d open your eyes again if you closed them now. Instead, you grit your teeth and endure the pain, refusing to let your mind relent. Thoughts and flickers of memory flit through your head, until they slow down and finally coalesce into a hard truth. Someone on your ship tried to kill you. And while you can easily think of dozens, even hundreds of trolls who would be thrilled at your untimely demise, the attacker could only have been a member of your own crew.

The  _ Vengeance _ , meanwhile, is lurching through space nonetheless, unaffected by the attempt on the life of its captain. Since pupation, you have endured a number of such attempts, but never have you teetered so delicately on the edge of death. Even the vicious brawl that cost the use of your right eye failed to incapacitate you, and as those scars ache with memory, you can’t help but recall the farming sickle that caused that very wound. That sickle, which you claimed later as a bloody prize and modified into your weapon of choice, is presumably still laying forgotten within your ring modus, lost amidst the chaos of the  _ Vengeance’s _ arrival. 

Without a weapon, indiscriminate massacre was unfortunately off the table for now. While certainly not your preferred method, a strategic approach would have to suffice this time around. After all, you don’t even know how many trolls are in the crew you were promised, but even without meeting them, you know you can divide them into two possible categories. Category A consists of threats: your attacker and any of their accomplices. Being in Category A is a death sentence, and you will be the executioner. Category B, meanwhile, consists of the ones smart enough not to be in Category A, who earned the honor of continuing their lives as your expendable pawns. Now, you simply have to determine who belongs where, while procuring whatever tools and weapons you can find along the way. 

Your blood starts to boil with resolve, your aching and chilled body bending to your will as you force yourself to stand upright. The icy cold and the head-splitting pain dull into afterthoughts, adrenaline and rage surging through your veins in equal measure. Gritting your teeth furiously, you swing open the door out of the cold storage room and into the galley, where your blood is smeared in a messy trail on the floor. Whoever the mutinous traitor was, it appeared as if they had dragged your body into storage, and left you there to bleed out.

Whoever they are, they’re about to wish they finished the job.


	3. Chapter 3: Surprise from the Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awake, alive, and positively furious, Karnus is ready to rip some answers out of whoever he can find. That is, unless they find him first...

As you cross the threshold into the _Vengeance_ ’s galley, you find the room empty and the ship eerily silent. Aside from the constant, droning whine of the nearby thrusters, and the quiet hiss of the refrigeration unit you just exited, you can’t pick up any sounds. It feels as if the ship was abandoned, but that couldn’t be the case. Someone is flying the _Vengeance_ into parts unknown, and it certainly isn’t you.   
  
While you’d certainly love to skip to the showdown, you’re sadly in no condition to do so. You’re unarmed and barely thawed, with no way of telling exactly how long you were out of commission. For all you know, it may not even be your wriggling day anymore. The vast emptiness of space offered no hint of the passage of time, no burning sun or glistening moon to ascertain the hour. Distant stars twinkle faintly, but those stars have certainly not aligned for you.

Even your quietest steps ring out like gunshots, echoing through seemingly empty halls and piercing the veil of relative quiet blanketing the area. Your head is on a proverbial swivel, as you watch for any kind of motion, but your continuous attempts to identify anything return nil. In fact, your focus is so locked onto finding another living thing that you nearly walk right past the locker labeled “WEAPONS”.

It’s so conveniently placed, in fact, that you briefly suspect some kind of trap awaiting you. So you press yourself up to the steel door, listening for any hint that anything other than instruments of death awaited in there. Still, no sound but the ship’s engines greets your ears. You can scarcely believe your luck. In mere moments, your vulnerability would be erased. Weapon in hand, you could carve your way to some answers, and finally exact your gleeful vengeance on the scum who dared to cross you. Your heart already pumping with anticipation, you pry it open, and discover nothing short of a miracle.

A familiar steel glistened in the faint light. Somehow, mounted in front of you, was your own modified scythe, complete with Stingwraith’s potent venom gland lashed to its wickedly sharp tip. You can’t even begin to imagine how this weapon, assumed to be lost for eternity, had followed you onto the ship, but there's no item you’d rather have. In fact, there’s no other item you _could_ have; not a single weapon was left in the locker besides your own. Beset with gratitude at whatever cosmic force guided it here, you gingerly reach for the implement. However, as your fingers hover mere inches from your tool, the scythe is rapidly consumed by a blossom of shadow, darkness encompassing it completely before you can even react. Just as soon as it appeared, the shade vanishes, and the weapon you so desperately needed has disappeared along with it. You can only stare, confounded, as your mind tries and fails to conjure an explanation. You’re so preoccupied with making sense of what just happened that you fail at first to notice the distinct tapping on your shoulder. Once it does register, though, you whip around swiftly, bracing yourself immediately for a battle. Meeting your gaze head-on is a sly-looking oliveblood, decked in sniper’s camouflage a few sizes too big. He flashes you a wink and a devious smile before deftly whirling about your scythe between both hands with surprising aptitude.

“(hehe. looking for this?)” he says mischievously, his voice hardly above a whisper. You desperately want to lunge forward and maul him with your bare hands, but the scythe continues whirling so fast that you’d be shredded to ribbons if you approached. 

Taking note of your raw fury, his smile only grows wider. “(now now, lets not be hasty friend. unless youre looking to die for real this time?)” This gives you pause. Whoever this joker is, he obviously has information. And information is something you badly need right now.

“Someone on thiS Ship tried to cull me,” you growl, keeping your bloodlust contained for now. “and either you’re on my Side or theirS. which iS it?”

“(oh?)” he replies, slowing the weapon’s twirl dramatically. “(and how do you know i didn’t do it myself?)”

“becauSe,” you huff, “if you wanted me dead, you could Kill me right here and now.”

“(wow, round of applause for you karnus! guess you’re a bit more perceptive than i gave you credit for. that, or the head trauma somehow knocked your brain back into place.)” He gives an insincere bow. “(the name is heremi. not that i expect you’ll remember it. after all, were all the same to you arent we?)”

This guy is making it increasingly hard to keep your fury tempered. “are you. on my Side. or not.”

“(hey now slow your roll buddy)” replies the upstart Heremi. He’s right, you’ll probably end up forgetting that name. “(ill have you know i dont deal in sides. i deal in secrets. i deal in truths that were meant to be forgotten. i deal in information that, in certain hands, could make all the difference...)” he muses, his eyes gleaming, “(and i can choose to do whatever i please with it.)”

With an exasperated sigh, you finally realize what he’s playing at. He’s well aware he holds all the cards, between his cagey hints and the deadly weapon in his grip. You suppress your pride, and finally accede to the unspoken demand.

“fine. i need your help… pleaSe,” you sigh, hanging your head in begrudging defeat.

He cups one hand to his ear in false astonishment, still deftly rotating the sickle with the fingers of his free hand. “(pardon? i didnt quite get that! did you say that you, the almighty karnus sotorn, need the help of a lowly oliveblood like me? could you go ahead and repeat that, so i know i heard you right?)”

“heremi, don’t you puSh it. you would not believe the day i’ve had.”

For the first time, his smile softens into something almost genuine. “(alright buddy. ill help you. only because you remembered my name.)”


End file.
